X-Men Pulled Off Professor X's Crowd-Freezing Power With The Help Of Mimes
At the beginning of Bryan Singer's 2003 superhero film "X2: X-Men United," the title teens are enjoying a school field trip to the local Natural History museum. The kids don't get out too often, as they attend a special school for superpowered mutants, a class of people hated by the populace at large. While they are sitting in the museum cafeteria, a pair of bullies approach Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Iceman (Shawn Shamore), and Rogue (Anna Paquin) asking Pyro for the use of his cigarette lighter. Pyro denies them, and they snatch his Zippo out of his hands, lighting up immediately. Pyro, possessing the superpower to expand fires, winks his eye and causes the bully's lit cigarette to explode, setting his jacket on fire. Iceman, who can fire ice blasts from his hands, extinguishes the fire. Showing off their powers in public is verboten, as they run the risk of being discovered by the public at large.
At the moment Iceman uses his freeze abilities, however, every single person in the museum halts in their tracks. They all remain unmoving, weirdly mannequin-like, for a few unnerving moments. The teens' professor, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) angrily approaches them and admonishes them for using their superpowers. The X-Men all have to leave the museum now and hole up back at school. Professor Xavier is a powerful psychic, you see, and used his powers to freeze people's minds, leaving them unaware for long enough for the X-Men to leave.
The crowd-freezing moment was not a photographic effect, nor realized with CGI. In 2003, it was more practical to merely hire professional mimes to freeze in their tracks. In a recent interview with SYFY Wire, Ross Emery, cinematographer for "The Wolverine," recalls talking to "X2" cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel about achieving the effect.
Pickups for 'The Wolverine'
Emery was concerned about the crowd-freezing scene as he was to shoot something similar for a post-credit stinger included at the end of 2013's "The Wolverine." In "The Wolverine," the title character (Hugh Jackman) was at an airport, about to pass through security, when he noticed coins and other metal objects mysteriously floating up off of the counters around him. He wheels around to see Magneto (Ian McKellan) behind him. Then, just like in "X2," the crowd freezes in place. It seems that Professor X is there as well, now having teamed up with his old rival Magneto.
Emery looked to Singer's film for clues and asked his forebears for advice. No, he learned, that was not a special effect. It was just talented performers who were very good at standing still. Emery asked Singer and Sigel about it, and recalled the following exchange:
"We were like, 'Well, what's the best way to do this [freezing scene]? Is it all visual effects or do you shoot people against green screens?' They said, 'No, you just employ mimes. You just try and find as many mimes as you can. 'All of the foreground people are actually professional mime artists ... It's as simple as that.'"
For both "X2" and "The Wolverine," then, the filmmakers hired scads of mimes to appear as featured extras, happy to have people who were good at slowing their movements and coming to a halt. This author was unable to find if there were common performers for both films. There may not have been, however, as "X2" was filmed in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, and "The Wolverine" was filmed in Japan and New South Wales, Australia. It's likely each production culled mimes from the local talent pool.